I sometimes wonder if professional cycling is actually trying to create its own demise…
All we want is a modern and reliable way to watch the sport.
A system that works for everyone, regardless of where they live.
We very nearly had that.
At this point I almost hope the Saudi’s buy it, at least we’d be able to watch it.
Disappointing.
Taiwan is THE bike tech cluster in the world. I am sure that GCN shot a number of factory visits, about-to-be-released new tech, etc while they there, and will slowly release the videos over the next few weeks.
It’s a quiet time until TDU in January, so I am sure they will be glad to have some videos on slow release over the next few weeks.
I have acess to regular feed/linear Eurosport 1 HD and Eurosport 2 HD and still subscribed to GCN+.
Ad-free, break-free, whole CX season, easy to find content and some pretty good cycling docs for €40/month? How could I not?
Having previously subscribed to Eurosport +/Player, I won’t be subscribing to Discovery+. Service was shite, could never find anything older than 3 or something days especially alternative feeds. Also way more expensive and with less content while sponsoring the same overlords who just cost a few dozen jobs and clearly don’t value cycling fans? Nah.
I wonder when my classic Eurosport “annual pass” (£39.99) will be retired and I’ll be moved over to Discovery+…
CORPORATE SYNERGIES – gotta love 'em. Somehow they always seem to be worse for the consumer.
So for those in Canada and other regions, what are the alternatives now available that ISNT flo. Tried them, complete and utter waste of money.
Already have VPN for GCN so trying to see what I can flip to for 2024.
Sadly, in the past, this usually involved watching some pirate feed, and praying there was no malware involved.
I only paid for GCN once because I don’t want to do the VPN thing, and their rights were frequently restricted in the US, but this is just a massive loss for the cycling viewership community. I can’t help but wonder, if they had publicized this and doubled prices, could they have survived? I really think people would have paid the money.
I agree, there was definitely a route to a product that was a nice (albeit not enormous) profit making business. GCN+ never increased prices during a period of high inflation. I’m confident a 50% increase would have been paid by many.
But they also could have saved a few costs. I think an hours post race show with four presenters/pundits for just about every stage of every minor race, seemingly irrespective of the size of audience was excessive.
Eurosport player was a car crash a few years ago so I’m not confident in the new solution. Also, they will probably get less revenue from me. GCN+ £40 for a year, Discovery+ £6.99pcm so Feb-Jun equals £34.95 before I switch to ITV for the Tour and Vuelta 
Ouch. I literally just bought (last month) a new MacBook to replace the 2012 Mac Mini in my paincave, for the primary purpose of streaming GCN+.
We don’t know yet……Discovery / WB has said more details will be available in the near future.
The good news is that they are a global streaming company and they also have the numbers of subscribers in other regions, so they have a good idea of what the market is. The likelihood is that they will use one of their other platforms for regions outside the US, we just don’t know what it will look like yet.
Steephill.tv was a good resource ( 
) but they seemed to pull out when GCN+ came along.
GCN are indicating themselves it was a Warners organisational decision, rather than a profitability issue. I’ll guess we’ll never really know though and you are right folk more than likely would have paid twice the price for their service!
I was willing to pay $100 a year for gcn+. The whole thing just stinks especially for us in North America.
Shouldn’t be long now. The way they want to do it, they want everyone on the same thing.
It’s a bold strategy, Cotton…
Pretty much just a re-hash of what we already know…but all contained in one article.
I’d pay $100/year too.
We must remember that they allowed us to fly under the radar with a VPN. They could have easily shut it down. Every other service (Google, Amazon Prime) detects when you are a VPN.
Honestly, it felt too good to be true. I was wondering when the ASO or some rights holder would complain and shut us down.
GCN+ with VPN, to me, was the complete peak of cycling tv coverage and documentaries. Amazing for $50/year.
NBC Gold was a partial solution with terrible commentary, with only a thin slice of races. I think I did two years of this.
The recent delayed highlights on Youtube (by GCN I believe) were actually really good, and I watched that a bit in 2023, even though I had GCN+ too.
FloTV and some other services with pretty expensive monthly subscriptions that didn’t appeal. I think I did one month of Flo or Sling and it was just all add’s and terrible commentary. I’m pretty sure I signed up for a month and cancelled after one day.
If there’s a Discovery+ option that sits somewhere between 1 and 2 above, then I’m in. And I’ll happily do PayPal and VPN to watch it. If there isn’t at least good extended highlights on YouTube, then I will have no option but to stop following cycling. Which will be a great shame after following pretty closely for nearly 25 years.
Organisational reasons at least make sense, sort of anyhow.
I was trying to work out how shuttering it would save enough money. Since they’re still streaming the races then CDN, encoding, player, infrastructure and assorted costs will remain broadly similar, maybe slightly reduced domain costs but other than the app team (which considering the state of it at times I don’t think can be much) they’re not going to save very much at all.
Although I feel they’re going to lose more income from people not moving over than they gain with the more expensive subscription. I know I’m not subbing, discovery in the past has been bloody terrible for closed captioning on lots of their channels, which in my household is a deal breaker.
This is also a strategy (my company does it). Not saying that is what they were up to, but it is more common than not in this space (think sharing Netflix password). Early on it is usually more beneficial to relax (or completely disregard) enforcement of VPN usage or sharing accounts.
If you are already a big player (Google, Amazon Prime), enforce it. If not, give the drug away for free (but not really, but sure, but not really, but ok…wink, wink youngsters with no money anyway), get 'em addicted, then go ahead and take that $20 that they are more than willing to pay at this point. That will at least cover the cost, time, and resources it takes to do the actual enforcement, which in and of itself can be costly.
I understand what GCN is doing but the other players, whose content they are allowing to slip by a VPN are much bigger (ASO, NBC/Peacock, Eurosport). I’m honestly surprised that those other players have allowed it to go on.
Also worth noting that the complaints would not have come from GCN, as they are benefitting from the VPN usage.
The complaints would have come from the license holders in other regions, who were not getting those viewers because they were going “around” the system to get the GCN coverage.